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I am not convinced it was possible for the majority to be serious gamers in the 80s and early 90s without pirating. Games were an expensive luxury. My family must have purchased around three legitimate games per year, and the rest of the time made do with less legal copies and hundreds upon hundreds of demo disks.

These days I can afford a couple of games a month (much more if I use the Steam sales or online shops). It's very difficult to justify piracy once the price concerns have been stripped away, though plenty'll cite some moral reason - DRM, or another unpopular change, or maybe the developer did something bad which had nothing to do with the game at all. Makes little difference to me. As far as I'm concerned, if you're morally outraged then you should have all the willpower you need to ignore the game entirely. Reasoning that you shouldn't be punished for boycotting a game by not being able to play said game speaks of a worrying sense of entitlement.

There's no excuse or justification for piracy, but nevertheless it's something I used to do a lot because I was/am an arsehole. But these days I rarely bother. Steam is a huge reason why, it just simplifies things so much. But sensible DRM oddly seems to work for me - if it's going to be easier buying the game than pirating I probably will. It's odd, as again, this isn't an excuse, but I bought shit-loads of games (20-30) last year and pirated only three. Arkham City because I was going to have to battle with GfWL anyway even if I bought it, and because the pre-order retailer-exclusive DLC was ridiculous and the pirate version just had everything. AssRev because all my console-owning friends were already playing and it was available from certain places before the PC release, and DNF out of morbid curiosity.

Again, not saying those reasons justify piracy, it's wrong and I'm not defending it. But given I only pirated 3 games in a year, 10% of what I bought, those reasons seem to be significant. Is anyone in the same boat as me?

Again, not saying those reasons justify piracy, it's wrong and I'm not defending it. But given I only pirated 3 games in a year, 10% of what I bought, those reasons seem to be significant. Is anyone in the same boat as me?

I'm in a similar boat, last year I only pirated 3 pc-games and bought a solid 20 odd otherwise. The pirated games were: Deus Ex Human Revolution (because I wanted to play it really bad and couldn't afford it at the time, but I have since bought it), Saints Row the Third (I actually had no interest in this game, but a friend pirated it and gave me a copy, and I thoroughly enjoyed. I'm hoping to buy it during the up-coming steam sales), and Skyrim (which I pirated due to the silly price; it's $90 USD on Steam... still), and I'll likely buy Skyrim on Steam when it drops below $20 USD in my region so I can get at the mods.

However I'm of the same opinion as Deano, I know piracy is bad, and I'm not trying to legitimise my involvement in at all, it just happens sometimes.
On the topic of Steam Sales: I believe the entire idea of steam sales is to reduce piracy. When you look at regular software releases(such as OS, MS Office, or any Anti-virus software), they usually implement price-discrimination; where in they release different versions of the product with different feature sets to entice different market segments (which are defined by their willingness-to pay for the product (which is determined by the value they place on the product, which is influenced by various factors)). But you can't really do that with games, so instead you get free demo's with the purpose of modifying the value a consumer places on the product, and then theirs the sales, which are there to cater to the people with a lower willingness-to-pay for the games.

Off-topic a little: but, one issue I do have with the Steam-sales is that in some instances the price is reduced too much, too fast. An example of this would have been King Arthur 2, since it's release it has only had 1 sale, which was of the 75% discount (reducing the price down to $7-somthing), where as I would have been quite happy paying up to $20 for the game (original price was $30 or $40, I think). I guess the benefit of reducing it further is in increasing the number of sales they make by including a lower market segment in the sale, but even still, they would have been more profitable to have incremented the sales by having a 50% off sale first, and then some time later having a 75% off sale.

The problem is there are people out there who have no intention of paying, ever. No matter how much money they have or how much they like the game they just won't pay for something they can get for free.

The thing is then you can't do much with those people so I wouldn't bother with them, thanks for playing my game now leave someone who can pay for it. I think a lot of people would pay for it then not...that might be a bit to optimistic but hearing lots of stories about pay what you want and steam sales has made me more optimistic.

I'm absolutely in favour of piracy and I fully agree with Neil Young who says "piracy is the radio of the 21st century." I don't do it anymore, though.

My feelings exactly. I mostly don't pirate games anymore and when I do it's mostly for practical reasons (ie game being late in the post and I have a free weekend coming up). However I do pirate movies/music and I go regularly to the cinema and concerts.

Without wanting to start another debate here, I think creative 'industries' should really decide if they are making art or commodities for sale. If it's art, then for me it should be (almost) free and available to everyone and they need to find another way of paying their employees (ie it's not a business). If it's a product, then they have to compete with piracy and the convenience it brings to the customer.

Most money is spent on Playstation 3 games since I can't pirate those.

Not the Blu-Ray, no. But PS3 games piracy is possible. Just, not as simple as popping in a disk. I've seen people taking a quick trip to the shops, modding their PS3s, installing games straight into their hard drives and play it, just like that. No online, though.

Not the Blu-Ray, no. But PS3 games piracy is possible. Just, not as simple as popping in a disk. I've seen people taking a quick trip to the shops, modding their PS3s, installing games straight into their hard drives and play it, just like that. No online, though.

Yeah I friend of mine modded his PS3 with software but hearing it's a a lot of hassle to get it to work, random freezes, no online and the change of getting banned is not worth the trouble.

I did soft mod my wii which was fairly easy, took me around 2 hours including reading the instructions. I am happy I can download and play all of my Wii games of from a External Hard disk.

Off-topic a little: but, one issue I do have with the Steam-sales is that in some instances the price is reduced too much, too fast. An example of this would have been King Arthur 2, since it's release it has only had 1 sale, which was of the 75% discount (reducing the price down to $7-somthing), where as I would have been quite happy paying up to $20 for the game (original price was $30 or $40, I think).

There's a weird oddity there and I'd speculate it's to do with DLC. If it's anything like the first, King Arthur 2 will be getting a bunch of low-price DLC expansions (about £8 each). So if you can get people in to buying and playing the game early with a big discount you can then try and sell them the DLC at full price.

Whereas if you wait, the way Steam sales work is that all but very recently released DLC gets discounted to the same level as the base game, or there's a bundle available.

In other words, it's more profitable for them to sell me the game at 75% off, then the DLC at full price, than it is to save the big discount for later and sell me the bundle of game and DLC all for 75% off.

I stopped pirating new games even to try them like a demo when STEAM switched to local Russian prices. Roughly a year before that I bought games I really wanted on STEAM for full price( Witcher 2, New Vegas both preordered for 50$) and downloaded those I wasn't sure about. And I also bought most games I loved in my pirate years( Deus Ex, VTMB, Planescape Torment, Fallout 2, XCOM, JA2, Disciples 2, Mirrors Edge, Half-Life). Sadly, it's really hard stopping pirating soft and it's even worse with music.

Interesting. Personally I know a few people working in the industry, and they pirate lots of games themselves. After hearing stories from one of them, I don't particularly want to pay for games or support certain companies. Still buy off the nice ones. Or the ones who will genuinely be affected by a lost sale, eg small companies.

Downloading a game does not mean employees don't get paid. They are not related.

The problem is there are people out there who have no intention of paying, ever. No matter how much money they have or how much they like the game they just won't pay for something they can get for free.

Is this really a problem though? Is it still a lost sale if they never would have bought it in the first place? I'm almost able to call this a victimless crime, but I know the feeling of not being paid for my hard work and I don't wish that on anyone.

Originally Posted by Drake Sigar

I am not convinced it was possible for the majority to be serious gamers in the 80s and early 90s without pirating. Games were an expensive luxury.

Yes, this! I've read (sorry, can't find the reference) that, adjusting for inflation, $50 in the 90s was the equivalent of just under $65 today, and $50 in the 80's was closer to $75 today. That's a major investment in a yet-unproven market.

But the fact that the publisher decides their last game didn't make enough money and so fires them is

Because obviously piracy is the only reason for bad sales it couldn't be that they:

Released it at the wrong time
Released it at a time where many other big games were being released
Didn't advertise it enough
People didn't think it was good enough to buy
Or the other million other ways they could have low sales

Because obviously piracy is the only reason for bad sales it couldn't be that they:

Released it at the wrong time
Released it at a time where many other big games were being released
Didn't advertise it enough
People didn't think it was good enough to buy
Or the other million other ways they could have low sales

Or their perception of 'bad sales' was entirely unreasonable to begin with. Dead Space 3 needs to sell 5 million units to be viable? Fuck off.

Originally Posted by Woundedbum

It didn't say that it was the only reason dear fellow, but it's certainly a contributor, and is relevant to the point that I was responding to.

I rekon the big publishers contribute far more to the developer's downfall (and their own) than the pirates ever could. DRM, incorporating and abusing Metacritic directly into their deals, terrible customer service, stealing IP rights by making devs sign draconian contracts, laughably outdated business models, etc.

I don't think it is even indirectly the problem with piracy is that its to easy a boogeyman to put all your blame on everything and they do because they can't actually look at themselves and say "Hang on with balooning budgets we have to sell more and more and this can't go on like this something has to change somewhere" since thats the hardest thing to actually do.

The problem with piracy if if you're download things and getting them for free you're losing the emotional value of whatever it is you're downloading. If you've downloaded a game you don't like you'll just end up starting up another download. I'm sure most people who do this never give themselves a chance to like anything for beacause the'll play a game for a hile just to see if it works and then start on another download. I've known for to many people who do that end up with an 'everything is shit' mentality to bother doing it myself.

Piracy actually brought me back into the fold. Some time after HL2, I stopped playing games entirely. Up through the end of my teens, I treated much of my income as disposable; in my early twenties, I bought a handful of games a year, when responsibility and having a life began to set in. After 2004 and prior to 2007, the only game I bought was Guild Wars, at the behest of a friend, but I tired of it rapidly.

Around 2007, I jettisoned a bunch of friends and went back to being a loner. With time to kill but a need to remain financially responsible, I began pirating in full force. It never stopped me from buying the big releases I normally would have purchased anyway (FO3, etc.), and today I probably have a terabyte of bounty, 80% of which I never installed, and 95% of which I never played for more than an hour. Many of the games I pirated were older and not otherwise available at the time. It's also important to note that, outside of my teenage years and hiatus, my purchase rate never really deviated from 4-6 games a year. The treasure trove of crap I downloaded was not comprised of games I planned or could afford to buy.

Piracy went a long way toward making games a part of my life again. It helped me catch up with many things I missed, and kept my interest up when I otherwise wouldn't have been able to afford it. In the last couple years, I've abandoned it for everything but "demoing." My interest has since turned more toward indies, and I've spent more on games in the last year than I did in the previous ten combined.

I don't think it's beyond reason to speculate that piracy went hand-in-hand with the growing prevalence of the hardcore gamer. Many of the kinds of games played on console since the PC piracy heyday got their start on PC, as expectations and interests passed from older siblings to younger and disseminated from there. Piracy probably helps create and maintain young adult customers who will at some point in their lives realize they can afford to buy, or buy more.